There is a natural eagerness in Arsenal fans for the club to undergo a major overhaul this summer following a couple of seasons of some serious underperforming by the squad, however, one should be careful for what one wishes because the grass is not always greener on the other side.
Most Gooners could easily name you 6-7 players that they want to be offloaded, I could do the same and obviously, we all want top class players brought in as their replacements but changing so many players in one fell swoop is a dangerous undertaking.
For starters, players need time to bed in and some players will simply not adapt to the English game and all that creates an unbalanced and unstable team.
Players need to know each other’s game and of course learn the style of the manager and that does not happen overnight, you need competitive games to get it right and do we really want to be doing that in the first weeks of the Premier League?
Bringing in two or three players in and expecting them to adapt straight away is hard enough but doing that with five or six players is nigh on impossible.
It did not happen overnight with Pep Guardiola at Manchester City or Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, they understood that too many changes too quickly makes the rebuilding job much harder.
Remember, this Arsenal team was just one point from the top-four and reached the Europa League final, they are not a useless team, no, they are not at the top echelons any more but they are not on the level of the likes of Wolves and Everton either.
Unai Emery was always going to need at least two seasons to implement his vision, some of his new signings were also going to need at least a couple of seasons to adapt to the Premier League and while there are some players that have to be sold because they are not Arsenal quality, there are other players that will be better next season.
Two or three strategic quality signings is all that is needed this summer, maybe one in January but not many more, there is a core in the team of at least seven players that this Arsenal team can be built around, Leno, Holding, Bellerin, Guendouzi, Torreira, Aubameyang and Lacazette, there are youngsters that can be brought in like Nelson, Nketiah, Bielik and Wilock and existing players that could yet be valuable like Maitland-Niles and Mavropanos.
Bringing in a couple of top-class proven players with experience could easily compliment what we already have without the drastic need of major surgery to the squad.